JETLINER CARRYING 258 TO U.S. CRASHES IN SCOTTISH TOWN

By CRAIG R. WHITNEY, Special to the New York Times

Published: December 22, 1988

LONDON, Dec. 21—
A Pan Am Boeing 747 on a flight from London to New York with 258 people aboard crashed tonight in a southern Scottish village, British military authorities reported. The airline said it knew of no survivors.

The passengers included at least 36 Syracuse University students of a group of 38 who purchased tickets for the flight. An unknown number of American military personnel flying home for the holidays were also reported to have been aboard.

The plane was flying at 31,000 feet when it suddenly disappeared from radar and crashed into two rows of houses, setting them on fire.

There was no immediate indication of the cause of the crash. British officials would not respond to speculation by some about a structural failure or an on-board explosion in the jumbo jet. Flight Originated in Germany

Pat Coffey, a spokesman for the British Royal Air Force, said the plane, Pan American World Airways Flight 103, left Heathrow Airport outside London after originating at Frankfurt, West Germany, and was bound for Kennedy International Airport.

Among those on board was the chief administrative officer of the United Nations' Council for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson of Sweden, who was flying to New York for the signing of an accord on Namibian independence, aides to Mr. Carlsson said. Others included executives of Volksagen and The Associated Press. There were also unconfirmed reports that six members of the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service were aboard.

Pan Am officials in New York said it was the worst single-plane disaster in the airline's history. Disappears From Radar Screens

The plane left Heathrow about 25 minutes behind schedule at 6:25 P.M. (1:25 P.M., New York time). It disappeared from air controllers' radar scopes 52 minutes later, shortly before a series of explosions and fires were reported on the ground in the Scottish village of Lockerbie, according to witnesses and official accounts. [ The Associated Press quoted authorities as initially saying that the plane may have hit a hillside in the hamlet of Corrie, six miles from Lockerbie, and that debris was strewn across the countryside. ] ''The aircraft is reported to have hit two rows of houses, which have been demolished by the impact, and also to have hit vehicles on the highway,'' said a spokesman for the Royal Air Force's rescue and coordination center near Edinburgh. Houses and cars along the highway to Glasgow were still blazing fiercely several hours after the crash, he said. There were no survivors in these houses, about 40 in all, The Associated Press reported.

The Press Association, Britain's domestic news agency, said that 9 or 10 bodies had been recovered about two miles from the crash site.

''A rescue situation does not exist anymore,'' the rescue and coordination center said. ''We are just recovering bodies.''

BBC television late tonight broadcast pictures of raging fires, devastated houses and cars and shreds of aircraft wreckage. Witnesses said the huge aircraft had left a deep crater where it came down, near a gasoline station.

A retired policeman, Bob Glaster, who lives near the site of the crash, said: ''The plane came down 400 yards from my house. There was a ball of fire 300 feet into the air, and debris was falling from the sky. When the smoke cleared a little, I could see bodies lying on the road. At least one dozen houses were destroyed.''

The spokesman at the rescue and coordination center said that the first impact of the plane was in the southwestern corner of the village, which has a population of about 4,000, and that the aircraft had bounced after hitting the ground, spreading wreckage over six areas over 10 miles. ''We obviously fear many people were killed, but there are no reports of casualties yet,'' he said more than three hours after the crash.

The airplane had a capacity of 412 passengers. There were 243 passengers on board, and 15 crew members, Pan Am said. Jeff Kreindler, a Pan Am spokesman in New York, said the was ''no sign at all'' of adverse weather that might have been a factor.

Emergency blood supplies were sent to the crash site from hospitals all over Scotland. The village hall was being used as a makeshift mortuary.

Mr. Kreindler, the Pan Am spokesman, said, ''There was no indication of any problems on board that aircraft or with the machine itself,'' Asked whether the plane's crew had received any bomb threats, he said, ''There were no threats.'' No Midair Collision, Either

The British Defense Ministry said there had been no midair collision with another plane, civilian or military, and Michael Vertigans, a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority, said there were no reports of emergency signals from the plane before it went down. An air-traffic controller at Prestwick Airport near Glasgow was reported to have spoken to the pilot of the plane a few minutes before the crash, and he reportedly gave no sign he was in difficulty.

The crash was the worst aviation accident in British history. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said tonight that she was ''shocked by this terrible disaster'' and expressed her sympathy to the United States Ambassador, Charles H. Price 2d. She sent her Secretary of State for Scotland, Malcolm Rifkind, to the scene this evening, and Britain's Transport Secretary, Paul Channon, said he would make a report on the findings Thursday morning.

Mr. Price and Mr. Rifkind flew to the scene tonight. Earlier, the United States Embassy in London said it was not known how many of the passengers were Americans.

Pan American's planes from Germany and Britain are often used by United States Government employees and military servicemen stationed in Europe and their families.

The rescue-center spokesman said the fire on the ground had hampered rescue attempts by teams of police and Royal Air Force doctors who flew by helicopter from military bases near the crash area. The A74 highway between Glasgow, about 70 miles northwest of the site, and the Scottish border with England, 20 miles to the south, was cut, and telephone lines to the area were also brought down by the crash. Witness' Account

Mike Carnahan, who lives two miles south of Lockerbie, said: ''I was driving past the filling station when the aircraft crashed. The whole sky lit up and the sky was actually raining fire. It was just like liquid.''

Mr. Carnahan said he thought the aircraft had been trailing flames before it hit the ground, but there was no confirmation of this from authorities.

The plane that went down tonight was delivered to Pan American in February, 1970, according to Craig Martin, a spokesman for the Boeing Company, the manufacturer. He estimated that it had 72,000 hours in service and had made 16,500 landings.

Aviation authorities thought that since the jet disappeared from ground controllers' radar screens when it was at 31,000 feet, without an emergency call from the cockpit, whatever brought it down must have happened instantaneously. What Happened to Transponder? If the power to the electrical system operating the plane's transponder had not been suddenly cut, the transponder would have kept sending signals about the aircraft's position and altitude to radar screens on the ground, which would have shown it losing altitude as it fell.

Among the kinds of things that might have suddenly cut power would be a bomb, an explosive decompression caused by a structural weakness, or a decompression caused by a midair collision.

Mr. Kriendler said there was no indication of an explosion and that Pan Am had not received any threats.

He said that 30-mile-an-hour winds were reported at about 4,000 feet when the aircraft took off, but there was no information of how strong the winds were at 31,000 feet, the plane's cruising altitude before it apparently lost power.

The 747 was a relatively old plane, the 15th such aircraft built, and had been involved in one previous accident, according to National Transportation Safety Board records. That was in 1970, when it encountered severe turbulence near Nantucket on a flight from New York to Paris. Seven people were seriously injured.

However, Mr. Kreindler, the Pan Am spokesman, said at a news conference tonight there was no indication that the age of the plane had anything to do with the crash. He said that in 1987, it was renovated under the Civil Reserve Air Fleet Program of the United States Air Force.

Under that program, he said, commercial aircraft are specially outfitted to expand the airlift capabilities of the Air Force, including adding a large cargo door and reinforcing the floor.

Pan Am officials have said that the changes put no extra strain on the aircraft. In addition, Mr. Kreindler said, the plane underwent cyclical maintenance in San Francisco on Dec. 14 after 250 flight hours.